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Around the World in Eighty Days

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At the Reform Club in London, the precise Phileas Fogg bets his fortune that he can go round the world in eighty days. With his new French servant Passepartout he leaves that very evening, and a detective who thinks he's a bank robber follows them all the way. By Jules Verne (1873), translated by George M. Towle. A public-domain classic.

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How it begins Mr. Phileas Fogg lived, in 1872, at No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814. He was one of the most noticeable members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little was known, except that he was a polished man of the world. People said that he resembled Byron—at least that his head was Byronic; but he was a bearded, tranquil Byron, who might live on a thousand years without growing old.Certainly an Englishman, it was more doubtful whether Phileas Fogg was a Londoner. He was never seen on ’Change, nor at the Bank, nor in the counting-rooms of the “City”; no ships ever came into London docks of which he was the owner; he had no public employment; he had never been entered at any of the Inns of Court, either at the Temple, or Lincoln’s Inn, or Gray’s Inn; nor had his voice ever resounded in the Court of Chancery, or in the Exchequer, or the Queen’s Bench, or the Ecclesiastical Courts. He certainly was not a manufacturer; nor was he a merchant or a gentleman farmer. His name was strange to the scientific and learned societies, and he never was known to take part in the sage deliberations of the Royal Institution or the London Institution, the Artisan’s Association, or the Institution of Arts and Sciences. He belonged, in fact, to none of the numerous societies which swarm in the English capital, from the Harmonic to that of the Entomologists, founded mainly for the purpose of abolishing pernicious insects. Keep reading →

About this story

In 1872, the calm and exact Phileas Fogg bets his friends at the Reform Club in London that he can travel round the world in eighty days. He sets off the same evening with his new servant Passepartout, and a detective named Fix, who thinks Fogg is a bank robber, follows them.

Jules Verne published it in a newspaper in 1872 and as a book in 1873. People at the time followed Fogg’s progress as if it were real news. There is no hot-air balloon in the book, which is a surprise to readers who know the films. The journey runs by steamship, train, sledge and elephant, as the new railways and canals made it possible.

Themes: Travel, time and punctuality, chance, friendship
Good for: A long adventure to enjoy slowly; readers curious about the 19th-century world
Worth noticing: How much the story depends on timetables, and how little Fogg seems to care about the sights.

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#classic #phileas fogg #public domain #travel #verne #wager

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